NAME Apache::Authen::Generic - A generic authentication handler for the Apache webserver (under mod_perl) SYNOPSIS # httpd.conf PerlModule Apache::Authen::Generic <Location /cgi-bin/secure> AuthType Basic AuthName "Test Login" PerlAuthenHandler Apache::Authen::Generic->authenticate require valid-user PerlSetVar generic_auth_cipher_key abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz012345 PerlSetVar generic_auth_failed_url "/cgi-bin/login/login_form.cgi" PerlSetVar generic_auth_allow_url "^/cgi-bin/login" PerlSetVar generic_auth_cookie_name test_cookie PerlSetVar generic_auth_ref_url_var ref_url PerlSetVar generic_auth_set_cookie_env 1 </Location> # cgi script use Apache::Authen::Generic; my $auth_obj = Apache::Authen::Generic->new; if (&check_login($user, $pwd)) { my $cookie = $auth_obj->($data, $key); print "Set-Cookie: $cookie\n"; print "Location: $redirect_url\n"; print "\n"; } else { &handle_invalid_password() } # Efforts have been made to make this module work under Apache # 1.3.* and mod_perl 1.0, but it has only been tested under # Apache 2.0.* and mod_perl 2.0. DESCRIPTION Variables to set in the Apache configuration file The following are variables to be set in the Apache configuration file with the PerlSetVar directive. generic_auth_cipher_key This is the encryption key used for encrypting the cookies used to verify authentication. It must be 32 bytes (256-bit). The encryption used is AES-256 and uses an SHA1 digest to verify data integrity. generic_auth_failed_url This is the url users are be redirected to if they have not been authenticated (typically a login page). This url can be relative. generic_auth_allow_url This is a regular expression that will be run against the URI the user is trying to access. If a match occurs, the user will be allowed through, as if the user had been authenticated. This is useful for allowing the user to access the login page and to allow access to other public pages. generic_auth_cookie_name This is the name of the cookie that will be used to verify authentication. This must match the name passed to the generateAuthCookie() method when using a CGI script for the login process. generic_auth_ref_url_var This is the name of the field the handler will use to pass the current URI to the authentication failed page. This is useful for redirecting the user to the page the user was originally trying to access when prompted with the login page. generic_auth_set_cookie_env If this is set to a true value, and the first argument passed to the generateAuthCookie() method is a hash, those values will be available to your CGI scripts as environment variables whose names are the keys of the hash prefixed with the cookie name (as set by generic_auth_cookie_name) and an underscore. METHODS generateAuthCookie($data, $key, $cookie_params, $cookie_name) This method is used to generate the authentication cookie from a CGI script. The return value is the value to set for the header Set-Cookie without the end of line sequence, e.g., my $cookie = $auth_obj->($data, $key); print "Set-Cookie: $cookie\n"; print "Location: $redirect_url\n"; print "\n"; The value for $key must be the same value assigned to generic_auth_cipher_key in the webserver configuration. if $data is a reference to a hash and the generic_auth_set_cookie_env variable is set to a true value in the Apache configuration, the values from the hash will be available to your CGI scripts as environment variables whose names are the keys of the hash prefixed with the cookie name (as set by generic_auth_cookie_name) and an underscore. authenticate($request_obj) The main interface to this module. This is the method to be called as the authentication handler. If you wish to subclass this module, the following information may be useful. The steps in authenticate() are as follows: 1) Instantiates an Apache::Authen::Generic object by calling the new() method. 2) Check if the user is already authenticated Calls $self->checkAlreadyAuthenticated($request_obj) Returns OK if return value is true 3) Check if the current URI is always allowed through Calls $self->checkGloballyAllowedUrls($req) Returns OK if return value is true 4) Redirect to login page if the above steps fail Calls $self->redirectToAuthFailedPage($req) Sets a Location header and returns OK EXAMPLES AUTHOR Don Owens <don@owensnet.com> COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2003 Don Owens All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. VERSION 0.01